Saturday, October 18, 2008

A Rvr ov Knawlege is Floin' en Mi Hed

I survived my first two weeks of school. My cold lasted three weeks, that would be up until a few days ago. Monday is my long day with Logical Thought and Programming in the morning and Principles of Visual Design (PVC) in the afternoon.

Going from Laurie, who is very calm, logical and good at explaining things slowly, to Amy, who talks as fast as that one girl from the Cosby show and has the psychic energy to match, was a shock to my system, to say the least. I seriously explored the option of dropping the class or switching to a different teacher. But the other section I wanted was full and reports were that Amy is a good teacher if you can handle her. Week two I was better prepared mentally, so I decided to stick it out.

My other classes are WDIM 101, which is basically an exploration of the field of web design and interactive media. Sort of a 'what the heck am I getting into,' class for new students so you don't take a related class the two terms before graduation and realize you've been in the wrong major for three years. (True story).

There's also writing and argumentation. That teacher seems to really know her history and says a lot of interesting things in class. As a mainly fiction reader (or at least I used to be when I had time to read books, which I seem have fallen out of for the past two years), this class will be good for me to catch up on some 'classic' stuff I haven't gotten around to--and wouldn't without a class to force me into it. The downers are that the actual tone of her voice is slightly irritating--but more annoying is that ninety percent of the class seems to be mute. There are about four of us who talk and this week's class was like a bad Ferris Bueller nightmare. When I said something after class, the teacher said her classes are usually much more engaged. Just my luck. Hopefully some of them will warm up in a week or two.

Thursdays I have off. Those are art days, since all my art homework takes me forever to do.

Fridays is my Image Manipulation class (think Photoshop fun). That started out slow but ramped up quickly this week. Fortunately, Phil is insistent that we tell him if he's going too fast. I took him at his word and made him repeat several sequences. I have taken a Photoshop class, but the muscled are out of shape. Our first assignment is a collage based on a song, which should be both fun and frustrating, as I try to make real images match what's in my head. I'm thinking of using one of Stephanie's new songs and doing something kind of sexy and haunted. She loves the tortured love songs, that one.

So far I'm actually enjoying my classes. Even all the books are good. Last week, I was geeking out about the Declaration of Independence. I really need to see the second movie...

Could be just the honeymoon phase, but I'm definitely not in Kansas anymore.